Get curated editors’ picks, peeks behind the scenes, film recommendations and more.
‘Until a generation ago, it seemed indecipherable…’
In 1960, humanity was on the cusp of achieving something momentous. After centuries of stargazing – and two decades of flying some airplanes very high – our species was finally preparing to blast through Earth’s atmosphere. The first manned space flights launched in 1961, and the first probe to fly by another planet – Mariner 2 – reached Venus in 1962. The extraordinary film Universe (1960) presents scientists’ grasp of our solar system, and the cosmos beyond, just before we took flight. From the vantage of today, much of the information is outdated – it’s no longer ‘reasonably certain’ that there’s vegetation on Mars, for instance. But the film provides remarkable insights into how far science and space exploration have taken us in just two generations, while serving as a reminder that paradigms will inevitably continue to shift in the decades to come. Beyond its history-of-science appeal, Universe also altered the course of cinema’s evolution: the film’s masterful cinematography and groundbreaking animation inspired Stanley Kubrick when he was researching his own space-traversing masterpiece, 2001: A Space Odyssey (1968). Kubrick even borrowed the voice of Universe’s narrator, Douglas Rain, for the iconic role of HAL 9000.
Directors: Roman Kroitor, Colin Low
Website: National Film Board of Canada
video
Food and drink
Local tensions simmer amid a potato salad contest at the Czech-Polish border
14 minutes
video
Technology and the self
A filmmaker finds a tactile beauty in the creation of her prosthetic leg
11 minutes
video
Knowledge
An Indigenous myth and a geological survey elicit two ways of knowing one place
4 minutes
video
Biology
Beetles take flight at 6,000 frames per second in this perspective-shifting short
9 minutes
video
War and peace
A war meteorologist’s riveting account of how the Allies averted a D-Day disaster
6 minutes
video
Physics
What does it look like to hunt for dark matter? Scenes from one frontier in the search
7 minutes
video
Technology and the self
How the magic of photography brought Victorian England closer to the spirit realm
16 minutes
video
Home
An artist endeavours to bring the Moon down to Earth in a ritual of yearning
5 minutes
video
Information and communication
An animation built from road signs is a whirlwind study of flash communication
2 minutes